We’re constantly told that content is king. If that’s the case, what kind of elite royalty is really good copywriting? MarketingHeadhunter.com’s Marketing Tip of the Week is to learn to write good copy:
…you might well ask “Why is it so important to know how to write great copy?” The answer is simple: Nothing forces a marketer to know her product and buyers so well as writing a sales letter with an arc to it — a beginning, middle, and end — constructed in the problem, agitate, solve format. The goal is to tell a ripping yarn which makes your reader Roy Rogers (the hero) and your product Trigger (his trusty steed). When you can do this, then you know how to put your fingers on the laces of the proverbial marketing ball.
That post led me to the site of copywriter Bob Bly, who has some good resources on his site. Check out the articles and report titled, How to Double Your Response Rates at Half the Cost. Bly seems to be an old-school copywriter who deals with new technology – email content, landing pages, etc.
Copywriting is indeed one of the most overlooked skills in web marketing. How often do home pages offer only bland assurance of great service and low prices? How often are product descriptions mere recitation of specifications? That’s not true of every web marketer, of course – check this snippet from JPeterman’s description of the “Gatsby shirt“:
The cotton we have used in our uncompromising replica of Gatsby’s shirt is so luminous, in and of itself, that even a person who notices nothing will notice something.
Gatsby, of course, could afford stacks of these shirts; rooms of them. Never mind. All that matters is that you have one, just one. A piece of how things were.
Read the rest of that copy, and you’ll be ready to drop that $85, no-collar shirt straight into your shopping cart. Good copy, even online, has the power to do a lot more than just inform – it can make the reader WANT the product or service. This isn’t big news to anyone who has spent a few years as a traditional direct marketer, but it’s a distinction that seems to have escaped many web marketers. Ladies and gentlemen, start your word processors…
